1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910791370403321

Autore

Rollison David <1945->

Titolo

A commonwealth of the people : popular politics and England's long social revolution, 1066-1649 / / David Rollison [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2010

ISBN

1-107-20992-7

0-511-84809-9

1-282-65291-5

9786612652912

0-511-80754-6

0-511-76919-9

0-511-77003-0

0-511-76696-3

0-511-76557-6

0-511-76835-4

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xv, 474 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Disciplina

942

Soggetti

Political culture - Great Britain - History

Popular culture - Great Britain - History

Populism - Great Britain - History

Community life - Political aspects - Great Britain - History

Collective memory - Political aspects - Great Britain - History

Social change - Great Britain - History

Great Britain Politics and government 1066-1485

Great Britain Politics and government 1485-1603

Great Britain Politics and government 1603-1649

Great Britain Social conditions

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

What came before: antecedent structures and emergent themes -- The formation of a constitutional landscape, c. 1159-1327 -- The power of a common language -- Discords, quarrels and factions of the



commonalty: an ensemble of popular demands, 1328-1381 -- The spectre of commonalty: popular rebellion and the commonweal, 1381-1549 -- How trade became an affair of state: the politics of industry, 1381-1640 -- Touching the wires: industry and empire -- 'The first pace that is sick': the revolution of politics in Shakespeare's Coriolanus -- 'Boiling hot with questions': the English Revolution and the parting of the ways.

Sommario/riassunto

In 1500 fewer than three million people spoke English; today English speakers number at least a billion worldwide. This book asks how and why a small island people became the nucleus of an empire 'on which the sun never set'. David Rollison argues that the 'English explosion' was the outcome of a long social revolution with roots deep in the medieval past. A succession of crises from the Norman Conquest to the English Revolution were causal links and chains of collective memory in a unique, vernacular, populist movement. The keyword of this long revolution, 'commonwealth', has been largely invisible in traditional constitutional history. This panoramic synthesis of political, intellectual, social, cultural, religious, economic, literary and linguistic movements offers a 'new constitutional history' in which state institutions and power elites were subordinate and answerable to a greater community that the early modern English called 'commonwealth' and we call 'society'.